


Mother

by jalfal64



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Emotional, Hurt/Comfort, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24793582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalfal64/pseuds/jalfal64
Summary: Spoilers for (and inspired by) AvocadoLove's story Unchained Melody.Rarely is it one swift blow that fractures a mind and shatters a spirit. Often the most heartless people feel too deeply, tried too hard and loved so long that all tenderness burned out inside them. What we see and don't of their influences in those lives can bridge the gap of the seemingly unreachable chasm between us.Azula has been protecting her mother for years. Isn't it time Mother protects her?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AvocadoLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvocadoLove/gifts).



> Spoilers for (and inspired by) AvocadoLove's story Unchained Melody.

It starts with shadows. Shadows that have an indiscernable weight and presence to them. Her three year old mind is too young to be able to define them beyond "wrong and living and creepy". She knows they are a danger but she isn't sure if she should be afraid. She's been sensing odd things in people for a year now. Able to read people and atmospheres easy as breathing, unconsciously. To feel their emotions and know when she is unsafe. 

She feels like she should keep her mouth shut about these shadows. That they are secret hidden things that shouldn't be exposed publicly. That their strength lies in their hiddenness and she wonders if she can learn that for herself. She learns her lesson from the first time she asks Mother about people's inner worlds that she sensed. Mother keeps pushing her to make friends, to learn about people. Isn't this what she meant? Mother's harsh and desperate rebuke, "Azula! Don't say those things, those lies! Even if they are true its terribly rude and dangerous to expose people like that. If you hurt them by speaking their secrets they will hurt you back, worse, for humiliating them. They'll punish you and me! Saying I'm filling your head with those lies. Do you want me to be taken away from you? Please Azula, you can't say these things." Azula, desperate for her mother's affection shakes her head, no. She doesn't realize she's accepted the burden of her mother's protection. 

Father keeps trying to put her in the spotlight. Mother keeps putting her in fancy clothes and giving her lessons on "sitting straight", "smile right", "be polite", "show Grandfather what a good smart girl you are" "show him that I've been raising you well."  
She's not sure if the "him" is Grandfather or Father sometimes. Mother's on thin, cracking lava with both of them. Spineless, voiceless, lifeless, except when she's with precious Zuko. Azula feels a fire burn in her, unnamed jealousy, for the easy love shown to him when she has to perform perfectly and so unlike herself for dead smiles and kind, empty words. She protects Mother by hiding herself everyday. Being just what Mother wants her to be! So where is her love? Where are her hugs and games and quiet tea times huddled together? Instead she has lessons and etiquette and training and "play nice with the palace guests Azula, maybe they'll be your friends some day". She tries to rebel, but she is a dutiful daughter and hungry for love."If you don't want me mother, who will? Who will have time for me if you don't?"her soul cries, but she is too young to articulate the words in these longings. "I'll keep trying, I'll keep trying, please just watch me, notice me get it right and then spend time with me!" Her subconscious screams but only the shadows hear. Azula has begun to cut herself off from her own heart as well. 

Azula doesn't understand that Ursa is barricading her heart from the pain of turning her daughter into the same bound creature she's become in this marriage. That these lessons spear her with memories of her own loving childhood that she feels robbed of giving to Azula as Ozai will steal her, KILL her, if she doesn't turn out the perfect tool. Isn't it better for Azula to be given her Father's false love and be safe, than to have to be two-faced like her mother and daily sever her heart out of her chest hiding her true feelings for safe ones?  
Ursa doesnt realize that neglect and manipulation will cause a schism all the same. That her performance lessons are already creating that divide in Azula. The young raging phoenix that wants to fly free. To experience the sun and to truly live, even if it means to die in ashes. To be reborn is to learn healthy resilience, to renew and rebuild from the fires of destruction, not become bitter, smouldering, crushed coals.  
Azula doesn't know what she wants out of her mother that her mother can actually give but she's tired of waiting for it. She knows she wants to be more than her mother's redemption. 

She was young, when the shadows started reaching out. Maybe 5, when she would wake from dreams with a sense that someone had come in the room. Several someones. "Father? ... Mother?" The first cry to the most likely, the last is the most desperate. She lit a fire in her palm and noted the door was still shut. She flared the fire and lit up the corners of the room. She saw no one there, but she knows what she felt, sensed. She looks again, this time pushing to look with more than eyes can see and there! And there! And another!  
Ghastly, spectral things looms towards her and she can almost hear their hungry moans but she can feel their malevolent intent. Her voice is caught, she can't call for help or scream! She feels cold in her bones, her marrow chills as they approach closer cutting off her escape! She needs to leave! She needs to fight! But how? She is surrounded and will weapons even work on spirits?  
Fire Sages, what did the Fire Sages say during the cleansing rituals? "Agni!" She thinks desperately, "Agni help me!"  
The spirits waver for a moment. She sees this and latches on, repeating his name like a mantra as if invoking his authority. After a few minutes they leave. She pants, desperately regaining her breathing. She's never felt so afraid. Never felt anything threaten her in such an existential way before. But she's also never felt so powerful. She made the immaterial flee. It took work and she'll need to start training on this as well. She has a feeling they will be back. That night sleep eludes her and she keeps the torches burning. 

She was right, they came back. Almost nightly now and a whole range of visitors. Some repeatedly. New forms and shapes and voices and threats. She can sense them from farther off now. Outside her room, lingering outdoors and rooms away, on other people. Sense them listening and waiting for her to be caught unawares to strike. She becomes hypervigilant, for threats in this world and the next. She thinks this is a fine strategy until the night they strike Zuko. 

Mother must sense them she thinks. She sees her mother attacked and invoke Agni's name to fight them off, but only when they attack her physically while she's sleeping. She doesn't fight the followers during the day. They share a bed and room at the Ember Island house when Father is away on business (planning campaigns for Uncle to perform). Away from the distractions of palace life Azula has plenty of time to observe Mother. But she's still ignored, like a background shadow, like the spirits she sees. Azula wishes her mother wouldn't retreat like a hermit crab into its shell while they are here (and only around her) but she is glad that her connection to the spirits is at least like her mother. The next night it is her mother who wakes when Azula is attacked and can't breathe. Her mother shakes her, invoking the name of Agni with regret in her tone as if it is her fault that Azula was attacked by this malevolent spirit. As if Azula can't win enemies on her own merit. Azula wakes and proves she can fight it off, invoking Agni's name with strength and indignant rage at her mother's useless pity and the spirit flees. Why is it the only times Mother looks at her it is with that forlorn look or disappointment? The next time, Azula doesn't subconsciously reach out to her mother's sleeping form when the weight on her chest stops her breath, and her mother doesn't wake. Azula fights it off and wakes again hours later when her mother's choking voice arises with the sense of the spirit returned. Mother still sleeps. Azula stirs, sitting up, reaching out a hand towards Mother and prays. Eventually the spirit leaves. This repeats nightly throughout the vacation. Azula again becomes her mother's protector. Now shielding her spirit, along with her body. Mother never knows. 

Father knows of them. One day while talking with Father a spirit moves and a linen falls to the ground in way gravity has not pulled it. Azula gasps. She knew that spirit had been following her. It often appeared around Father, but he's never made himself so obvious to someone else before. Father asks about the gasp. Still stunned Azula replies honestly. Father wrinkles his lips into a sneer and says with a disappointed shake to his head, "Anything that frightens you has authority over you. They are only spirits, show them your strength. You are a princess of the Fire Nation. If you can't fight immaterial enemies how will you lead a nation at war?" Father is right of course. Azula must be better.  
Is this why he doesn't defend Mother from them? Or cast them out of the home? He is the spiritual authority of their family. She wrestles with this deep inside but trusts that Father must have their best interests at heart. 

When they threaten Zuko she learns of fear for another. Zuko may hate her, they aren't the friendliest of siblings, but she knows she can't leave him unprotected.The idea of anything stealing the breath from her weaker brother...no she will not indulge this fear. But Zuko is too stubborn and dumb to listen to her warnings and can't seer-see for himself. Not that anyone in the family really talks about this. (Not like her friends do. The ones that visit and fill her with knowing. But they leave too soon, even when she doesn't send them away. They have their own agendas she reminds herself. She doesn't know what roles and responsibilities they have in the spirit world.) Zuko is too young to protect himself from the spirit world threats despite his age. In this too she will protect him. Just like she does for Mother. 

She lingers in his hallway at night or with an ear pressed to their shared wall as if she can hear their forms manifest. When they arrive, hungry and with dripping fangs and scythe-like claws she prays with all the fire in her. A protective inferno raging on his behalf. Half a year of this and then they leave, him anyway. They double up the threats and appearances on her now that she has established herself as a formidable enemy. They hardly even attack Mother anymore. Now Mother is occupied with Zuko and fights with Father. The spirits have found a new way to feed on her depression, despondency and occasional outbursts of frustrated rage. Mother and Father use words to tear each other's souls to pieces, and the spirits feed on the shreds. She learns the power of well-timed words as well. 

She fights alone in her nightly battles and the spirits persistence follows her into the day. She learns they are empathic like she is. And they're not dumb like the animals, they don't think, only feel. She knows the spirits aren't nice, aren't friends; they are predatory. So she treats them and herself like fellow predators sharing the same territory, like Father does. Respect my authority and I'll allow your presence. A royal lesson. 

She's learned to school her reactions and interactions with the spirits around others. She knows others see her as an odd child: joyless, making plays at fun but never really feeling it, too perfect and too smart and mature for age. She has trouble with peers and only knows how to behave around adults because of what she was taught in etiquette lessons. But kids are rude and dumb and didn't they get the same lessons? Why is so much easier for them to smile and play? She feels she has a right to be serious when she walks battlefields few else see. She has to be responsible, she has to protect Mother and Zuko and impress Father and Grandfather and all the Fire Nation and nobles she meets. She doesn't have time for pointless gossip and peer drama when she is trying to keep track of the spirits behind others' eyes and on ceremonial objects and those that flit in and out of the palace like the breeze. She is a dragon protecting her home and hoard, ever vigilant. Father said she had to ignore them but they don't attack Father! She isn't strong enough to brush them off yet like he can, so she will fight and show them her strength until they dare not approach her or hers again. "Only then", a small hidden part of her thinks, quivering, remembering ghostly hands wrapped around her throat and a crushing weight on her chest maliciously enjoying her struggle and desperation and wishing her to die, "Only then I'll be safe to breathe again, to sleep again and to love without fear of pain and loss." 

This continues for years. She talks to Agni even though he doesn't always talk back but she imagines the wind shifts and strengthing sun and her strong blue flames are gifts from him, for a dutiful daughter.  
Mother is atracked less, even if she is still a hermit crab around all but Zuko and more of a Mother-mannequin with a script around her. Mother's few real words about her hurt "What is wrong with that child?" So she puts on her daughter mask and buries her hurts in graves alongside her hopes. Zuko has been successfully defended and declared hers. She does not know she has wreathed him in a jealous spirit flame. Staking ownership of him to ward off opportunistic others. Now Zuko gets to be a child, her child, she senses, so she stays his dragon guard. It's unfair but it feels like a victory so she keeps it between her teeth and feeds on it when she battles the swelling sense of injustice. She is strong, Zuko isn't. This is making her stronger, like Father. Why waste her childhood on childish things when there is so much to learn? She wants to impress her Father like she impresses Agni. So, secure in Agni's approval of her she leaves him behind for while to pursue Father's approval and love. It is hard, demanding work but she WILL thrive under it. She can allow nothing less. Or they'll find out and all that she has worked for will die. 

They call her destructive and ungrateful when she lights things on fire that don't belong to her or were gifts. But they dont see the spirits attached to those things. Or the weight of expectations attached to those gifts that she doesn't have time to bother with. Those are spiritual burdens that will weigh her down not challenge her strength. She doesn't have time for useless shackles, only productive ones. The kind Father and Grandfather lay on. 

Then Grandfather dies. And Mother leaves (physically, not just in presence and engagement and spirit, now Zuko feels the loss she's known for years "Who's going to make me? Mom?") but the expectations don't. Now she is under even more demand. She has to prove to the world she doesn't have her mother's taint, her weakness. Prove she can be her Father's heir in a ruthless man's world while also surpassing all the lauded and desired feminine traits. She must be beyond perfect. There are too many painted-perfect-polished-pretenders out there. She must be the archetype. Agni is expecting this of her after all. He gave her these great gifts and the power of spirit to carry them.  
Only Agni knows she is more ruthless with herself than to others. They are failures after all, its in their natures, not hers. They just have to be encouraged and educated to greatness then given opportunities. "Do the tides command this ship?" Those that don't try to keep up will be bait or be crushed as an example. She has no time or room for lazy stragglers. She is fire. She is refining her nation. That is all. It hurts of course, to burn out those tender and flammable weaknesses out of yourself. But as she knows it is worth it in the end. She won't break under the weight of expectations. 

A few months after Mother disappeared something new approaches her. This spirit is more real looking than the rest. A shriveled husk looking person, but it has shape and substance and depth the other spirit-shadows don't. Not to the same detail and dimension. It approaches her cautiously but with purpose. Seeking her specifically when most others wander the halls like confused servants since they've learned to leave her alone at last. Azula doesnt know how desperately her soul has been crying out for mothering. While she mothered Mother before, she now feels void and bereft. Hope for a loving, mothering presence is gone and she feels years of hard work have been robbed from her as she had been so close to winning Mother to her hoard. Of smoothing over Mother's faults to Father, of manipulating her words and actions to shape Mother into the safe box and porcelain doll figure of Grandfather's and the nobles approval. Now all of that work and those plans are dust and ashes and her soul burns in fury and abandonment and grief. 

The dark spirit knows what it seeks. There is a wealth of pain-darkness in this section of the palace but none burn so brightly and with such fuel as this little girl. And, unless she is mistaken the girl can see her. The dark spirit will need to be very careful to lure this one. It could prove to be very beneficial indeed. It has been so long since she has had a seeing host. She is old and knowledgeable and has much to offer the young seer. Manipulation is an art she mastered long ago. 

She approaches the child cautiously but with intent. Projecting fear-of-rejection with purpose. The child has clearly lost something precious, if she gets close enough to touch the child-seer she can glean it from her grieving soul and determine the role she needs to play. Carefully, gently, beating back the gaping void of hunger-for-life she puts a hand on the child's face, a mockery of a loving caress. She is overwhelmed by longing! despair! anger-unfairness! grief! And frustration at carefully managed plans wasted and time lost. Oh! The child is missing her mother and has been for a long time. Ah, the neglectful mother she fought to protect. Incredible. She pulls her ghostly hand away. 

"Oh this delicious, pure-hearted, twisted and poisoned child. I will make you mine." she thinks to herself. Azula, the child-seer is called. She must be strategic to keep her, but she thinks this may be easier than she hoped. The child is desperate to be loved. To not be cast aside and disfavored for the weak ones. To be encouraged and acknowledged and validated for her efforts. She will be so easy to be shaped. She has purged herself (the child-seer called it refinement ha!) of all other connections save her brother and father. The brother is soft-hearted and weak. The father hard-hearted and proud, led by delusions of grandeur, yes she's been watching him. It will be simple to conform her to the father and in doing so disgust the brother. Further isolating her and securing a food source dependent on her validation (such a cheap and easy thing to give, so lucky for her that the child-seer's narcissistic father will not "stoop" to giving out such free and false words). Not to her directly but only in comparison. Yes, the groundwork for codependence has been laid. It is time for her to take the prepared throne. 

The dark spirit steps back. Standing directly in front of the girl. Arranges her face to show nervousness and hope.  
"Azula, child, do you recognize me? I've been looking for you. I'm sorry it took so long for me to find you. But I'm here now and I will never leave you."  
Oh! Such delightful twisted words and none of them lies. Let the girl mistake her and create her own meaning and she will never suspect; why shatter her own hopes? Never suspect that she made it all up and she was wrong. Oh, this will be a satisfying and effortless bond indeed.  
The girl starts, as if shaken out of a trance. Tears fill her eyes, she is trembling with a teary smile on her face as if all her dreams have come true. All her hard work come to fruition.  
"Mother?" she asks.  
It is done.


End file.
